Trying to Remain Neutral

One of the highlights of the annual Football Bowl Association meetings is getting to share information with your counterparts to make the bowl events in our respective communities the best they can be.

While Valero Alamo Bowl staffers came back from South Florida with enough scribbled notes to fill a three ring binder, this year’s meetings had a different tone with the BCS discussing major changes to the post-season just a couple of miles away.

After reading through 100+ stories (a mere 13,000 words that for the most part said the same thing over and over), it’s clear no one knows exactly what the new format will look like but every conference commissioner, athletic director and bowl director quoted had an opinion based on how it affects their constituents.

If anyone asked me for a quote, I too would have shown my bias as I think the current system has done well in matching #1 vs. #2, providing a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the student-athletes and driving interest in college football to all-time highs (it’s now clearly the #2 sport in fan avidity and rising).

I’d also refute the “sky is falling” media reports about plummeting attendance and viewership. As the graph to the left shows, attendance has been consistent over the last 10 years. While bowl ratings did drop, Halley’s Comet will come again before the following circumstances occur again in the same year:

• The NBA lockout condensed their schedule meaning there was more competition for viewers each night of Bowl Week.
• Christmas Day was on Saturday so ESPN only broadcasted one bowl game instead of their normal three during this prime weekend window.
• The NFL’s last game of the season fell on January 1 which meant the New Year’s Day bowl games moved to a workday: Monday, January 2.
• The BCS National Champion Alabama pitched a shutout against LSU.

While I’d be willing to bet my base model Nissan Altima (sorry radio and passenger vanity mirror are not included in this model) that viewership will jump up considerably this year, it will come well after a new system is announced this summer. My hope is that all the intended and unintended consequences are thoroughly vetted before a new format is chosen.

To that point, I’m amazed at how little time is being spent discussing how the Top 4 teams would be selected. Transparency and getting everyone’s buy-in on the front side will go a long way in quelling the upset fan bases from the teams that finish #5 and #6. Want an idea of the caliber of teams will be left out? Read CBSSports.com columnist Dennis Dodd’s story ranking the best #5 teams from 1998-2011.

Of course, you’ll also need a good system in place to justify why teams #3 and #4 are playing away if home campuses are used for the semi-finals. No doubt the campus atmosphere will be as electric as it was for UCLA at Oregon in the inaugural Pac-12 Championship even if students aren’t in session.

However it should to be noted that match-up was a 10-2 Oregon team vs. a 6-6 UCLA squad that was happy to go anywhere even if it meant playing in front of a crowd that was 90% pro-Ducks. There will be considerable push back when an undefeated team is sent into enemy territory given the historical success of home teams in college football. Granted the NFL playoffs feature home games until the Super Bowl, but there’s a major difference. The NFL dictates the regular season schedule making it infinitely more fair to determine who makes the playoffs.

There are also a bevy of hurdles to on-campus games since you wouldn’t know the site until the last minute. In the case of the Pac-12 Championship, the lack of hotel availability meant fans and sponsors had to stay in Portland and bus 2+ hours to Eugene. Such logistical considerations are one of the lightly reported reasons MLB Commissioner Bud Selig started awarding the winning league in the All-Star Game home-field advantage in the World Series. Every day you buy yourself improves the experience.

While we wait to see the new post-season format, our staff will use the days we have to improve the experience for the participating universities, their fans and the student-athletes.